Skills in Lords of Creation and DragonQuest

Last night I had intended to work on my modules, but fretted and paced to no avail and wrote nothing. Today I was dead tired from not having slept enough (not easy while fretting and pacing), and decided to take a look at Encounter Critical for Jeff Rients' competition. Guess what, I got sidetracked and got down Lords of Creation from the shelf instead. Yeah, that focused.

Did you know that there are actually skills in this Tom Moldvay design? I took a gander at the skills and their descriptions, and there was an illustration which caught my eye. On page 11 there's a lady, clothed in a ankle-length cloak. But, she is holding it open exposing a body which is either painted too look like stars and planets, or is actually a gate unto the void. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be seductive or scary. It is weird. Imagine what impression that would have left on me if I'd gotten this game at a more impressionable age. Gaming illustrations are weird sometimes. Hmm. Focus.

Back to the skills. Let's see how they work. Just like DragonQuest, these are nothing like any skills I recognize (BRP experience talking). In DQ a skill is something like a whole profession, or a class. Putting more experience into the skill unlocks new abilities, not to dissimmilar to class abilities. I thumbed through the character generation chapter in LoC, and there are skills in there! I saw a odd looking chart and decided to read up on how it worked. So, in this game you put points into a Skill, which have levels and are actually called a profession. Just like DQ you also multiply the level with some funky number (yay! arithmetics!)  to get a percentage of success. Hmm. I wonder if Mr. Moldvay knew of DQ? LoC is published in 1984, so I guess it's possible, since 2nd ed DQ was published in 1981.

I will probably not write a module tonight either.